Front Burner - Risk and reward at Carney’s big investment summit

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

This week, some of the biggest financiers in the world will be gathering in downtown Toronto along with Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country's premiers for an investment summit. The summit is part of Carney's plan to spur $1-trillion worth of investment in the country over the next five years. Senior business writer Peter Armstrong talks to Jayme Poisson about what's on offer, to whom, and considers the question: with all the uncertainty caused by the ongoing trade war is Canada really a safe bet?For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

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This is a CBC podcast. Hey everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson. Today and tomorrow, some of the biggest financiers of the world will be gathering in downtown Toronto, along with the prime minister, a bunch of his cabinet, and the country's premiers. The summit is part of Mark Carney's plan to spur one trillion dollars worth of investment in the country

over the next five years. So what's on offer and to whom? And with all the uncertainty caused by the ongoing trade were with Trump, is Canada really looking like a safe bet? I've got senior business writer Peter Armstrong to break this all down. Peter, hey, great to have you. Hi, Jamie. So before we get into the details, maybe you can just top line in plain English describe for me what this thing is, because I did see a headline in the Globe and Whale that called it the 24 hours that could change Canada's economic trajectory. What's the big deal here? It is a big deal. And,

And, you know, I'm the kind of person who always pushes back at these notions and says that's not going to be that big of a thing. This is a big thing. And the best way I've heard it described is, you know, those Team Canada missions that like the prime minister fills a plane full of like top CEOs and, you know, a bunch of ministers and they fly to Cotter and they meet, do a bunch of meetings there. And then they go on to Europe. And they do like a five whistle stop tour and they have it all organized. And these are these enormous undertakings. and they lead to a bunch of things. They lead to some business deals.

They lead to some trade deals. They thicken the ties between the companies and the countries and the politicians and the businessmen. This is like that at a scale we've never seen before because instead of going to 10 cities or five cities, we're asking the world to come to Toronto and come in and sit down and just do this pitch in basically the ballroom of a fancy hotel downtown where they can get everybody together in the same. moment talking about the same group of projects and it will hopefully spur along some of these projects that we've been talking about for a year and a half and will hopefully add to the amount of economic growth we have, which means that the means and the use of the world benefit, not just the companies that are building these.

And there are some real players who are coming, right? I can't even imagine what the security is going to be like, actually. I know that we don't have the full list of attendees, but we do know some of them. There's the CEO of the Singaporean Fund, Tamasek, senior officials from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, both the CEO of BlackRock and the president of Blackstone will be here. Just give me a sense of the significance of that list. Who are these people? What did they represent? Yeah, it is literally the who's who.

And not just is it the biggest investment firms like the Saudis and the Singaporeans and the Norwegians or the big sort of Wall Street firms, it's that the top guys, they're the ones coming, except cases where they've explained to the prime minister who's coming in their stead. It's the CEO or the president of all of these organizations is coming. And it's like, I can't remember the number. I think it's like $123 trillion in investable capital is going to be at this hotel on Monday and Tuesday. They're hoping to get a trillion dollars in investment over the next five years from

this group. So it is very hard to overstate that this is, you know, I talked to Frank McKenna last week, who works at a bank, and he said he's never seen this much money in one place in his life. Why do you think they're sending all their top guys? Like, is it Carney who is trading on personal relationships here? Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. I think there are all these things kind of happening at the same time and in the same moment that are kind of layered on top of one another. And Carney is part of that. Trump is part of that. Canada. is part of that. I think you see by revealed preference

the individuals and the organizations that are coming to that investment summit, they are coming because of Canada. If they wanted to go to the United States, they go to the United States. Of course, go to the United States as well. It's what we have. And what they're going to see as well when they come here is a country that is uniting, a country that is positive, a country that is building and wants to move forward.

Canada is a very attractive place to the world. It always has been. And I think, you know, in Canada, we kind of get down on ourselves and say, you know, we're the younger brother, the cousin to the United States, and we're not as big in an important an economy. We're the 10th biggest economy in the world. We have more resources than most other countries combined. We're the fourth largest energy exporter in the world with a very clear pathway to become

competitive in the top of that list. we have not just the minerals, right? Like the aluminum we make. When you think about military procurement of aluminum, they need a specific kind of aluminum. That's the one we make. We make copper that is going to be so desperately important to get anything built in this day of AI and electricity buildout.

So all of those things are coming together at the same time where the world has seen that Canada has what it needs and always did, but worried we weren't going to build it at a pay. pace or with a regulatory approvals process that would allow them to invest and get some money out of it. So they see that in one pillar. They see a leader who has a personal relationship with a lot of these organizations trying to leverage that. And they see a changing government that is pushing ahead with those regulatory reforms that they've been watching for. So a lot of

things are happening at the same moment that are really pulling this moment to the thing that it has become. And just to underline that point that you made, is that sort of one of Carney's challenges here and the government's challenges here to convince these investors that Canada is ready to move and move quickly in an environment that's, you know, more favorable to them. Yeah. Probably the most important job Mark Carney has in front of him is to not just convince the world, but to convince Canada that we're back in the business of building stuff. and, you know, it is in my nature to be skeptical that will they do the things they said they do? And that we should hold that skepticism up because we've had 10, 15 years of not doing the things that they said they do and of using government to block the things that they said they weren't going to do.

Getting those regulatory burdens out of the way without making it a bigger problem environmentally or locally or, you know, There are a reason these rules exist. The problem in Canada is we had four sets of them for every problem. And the path to navigate all of them basically became impossible. And then you add in a pipeline that had hundreds of millions of dollars invested into it that was eventually canceled. And you can understand why businesses said, I'm not going there. That's crazy. And the thing Mark Carney is trying to do is show both Canadians and Canadian businesses, but also the world,

that we're going to build responsibly, and we're not going to get rid of all of these regulations and rules about how we build, but we're not going to layer new rules at every jurisdiction on top of each other, and we're going to try to make it so we can actually get the approvals process that moves quickly. So these investors have collectively trillions of dollars at their disposal to invest. What do we know about what it is exactly that we are asking them? to invest in. There's a book, right? There's a book. It is a fascinating read. I mean, I read Lodin Some Dove this summer and I loved it. It's a great book. Everybody should read it.

The next read should be this prospectus because it is fascinating. It's a glimpse into, like, when I talk about that stuff about Canada's the 10th biggest economy in the world and we've got all the things the world wants, this is like the proof of that. And you go through, there's eight broad categories from energy to transportation and marine port infrastructure to power and utilities. And then it just lists these projects. I think it's 167 projects. And they are varied in terms of size and scope. There is that West Coast pipeline that's going to go take Alberta Bichman out to the

west coast to BC. But there is a bridge in Nova Scotia. There is a ton of mining projects. There's clean energy. And some of them are $100 million. Some of them are tens of billions of dollars. Some of them could literally get going before the end of the year. Some of them take a little bit more time to approve.

The pipeline, for example, isn't going to move this year. So it is this fascinating glimpse into what Canada feels it can and should be building right now. There's a whole section on digital technology and AI, including a bunch of data centers. I was going to say that. Do you mean data centers in that? Yeah. Did that jump out to you? Look, there are two main things that you think about when you think about data centers.

One is digital sovereignty, which is you kind of want to have the capacity to run that kind of stuff in your country rather than somebody else's country because that's a lot of data. And the other thing is these things take up a gobsmacking amount of energy. They get very hot is the reasons. They've got to get cooled down. And so Canada has a bunch of ways of doing that. One, you put them up in the north where it's already pretty cold year round and it's easier to keep them cool. Two, you make them build to import LNG or some natural gas to power it and keep it cool.

Or some of the other things that are in this are around the nuclear technologies that Canada is leading the way on, right? It would be remiss of me to come on a show like this and talk about Canadian business and not point out that I have had probably four million emails from people in the last week. week pointing out that Ontario power was able to complete its new nuclear refurbishment on time and under budget. And it's like one of those things that people are going to be carrying around like a flag at this meeting to say we can do this. We have done this. We are doing this. And on the data stuff, that's going to be really important. Being able to show we have the energy, we're rebuilding the grid in a way that will allow us to take advantage of that energy. because everywhere else in the world, Jamie, the deliverability of electricity or of power to cool these data centers is going to be a question.

And in some places, it's going to be a question of we can build this here. That's great. But how much is it going to drive up the cost of electricity and of power for everybody else that lives anywhere near it? And that's going to be a huge problem. That's one of the big reasons you're seeing such a pushback, especially in the United States on this. So the geography of Canada and. the energy projects emanating from Canada are really key to that pitch. Yeah, yeah, although, as you just said, political issues, they're not very popular.

They are not. There was much, I think, reasonable speculation in the lead-up to this event that Canadian airports might be on the table. An Australian pension fund had told the financial post this summer that Kearney's government was serious about selling airports to private investors. And, of course, when we talked, you and I talked in the spring after the economic, update. We talked about how the government seemed to be opening the door to that. But as far as I can tell, that's not actually in this deal book here. Why not? I think that is probably like the most interesting question out of all of this. And we're going to have to wait for, you know, Mark Andre Blanchard to publish his diaries like the Jim Coot's diaries. Because somebody will tell us at some point what that conversation looked like. And I think there has been a real push among some in the Canadian business community.

and in the upper echelons of politics in this country to get that done, to make that happen because it's like the golden goose that everybody has always said they want to be able to invest in mostly Pearson, but many airports across the country. And it didn't, it's not in the book. And why not? What were those conversations like? Maybe we'll be told a little bit this week about why it's not. But I think, Jamie, it's going to be one of these, like a book will be published in 25

years and boy, oh boy, is that going to be a fascinating book. Well, do you mean, do you think it's off the table? Or do you think it's off table for now? And maybe it comes back. Maybe it's something that, you know, you hold back the thing that they want the most and say, no, no, no, we're going to talk about these? And they say, well, look, I'll invest in, you know, the gigawatt factory in, you know, Canadian energies is proposing in Kent, Ontario if you let us invest in Pearson Airport at the

same time. So again, we don't know and we don't have a great line of sight into who picked these. How did they get picked? How are they going to get pitched? What is this going to look like? It is a sort of janky process. And we know we've been hearing. I've been hearing. I'm sure you have too from both the political side and the business side of the lobbying, the fierce and ferocious lobbying of companies that aren't on the list that are trying to get on the list and politicians trying to go to who. whoever made this list to say, hey, I got a project in my home riding that really wants a piece of this. And again, I don't know how much insight we're going to really get until all the dust is settled here. Talking about politicians, as I understand it, the premier of Manitoba, Wab Canoe, is going to be there to pitch the expansion of the Port of Churchill in Northern Manitoba estimated to cost about $57 billion himself.

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a seamless checkout process that gets customers to actually buy and the support of our AI assistant, sidekick, who can help you troubleshoot along the way. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. Peter, let's talk timing. Carney announced a summit back in April when the relationship with our largest trading partner looked a bit different and yes, things were rocky then, but they are much rockier now.

Is this really a good time, you think, to be pitching Canada as a place to invest? I think it is, and for a couple of reasons. One, when you're looking at this moment in Canada-US relations is incredibly fraught and it is rife with uncertainty. Everybody knows that. But who is it rife with uncertainty for? It's for people who generally manufacture stuff and ship it into the United States. That's not what any of these projects are, and that's not what any of the people pitching are looking for. These are like 20 and 30 year projects.

And all of like when you look at the big measures of where businesses, markets, currencies, bond markets, whatever, think about the Canadian economy. They think this is a really tough moment for it, but that we're going to get through this probably by the time the next president's in place, there's going to be trade piece again and we'll be able to put maybe not all the pieces back together the way they were, but we're going to move on from this. this unfortunate period. And so these people come in with a view to helping Canada expand to new markets, right?

So when you're looking at the Port of Churchill, that doesn't depend on retail and manufacturing access to the United States. Remember, 60 some percent of the Canadian economy is consumer spending, right? It's me and you buying stuff. That's what these guys see and see an economy that's trying to expand its exports out to the world that's expensive, that's hard, that's logistically difficult, and what they're good at. So there's that sort of answer that in spite of the uncertainty that comes with the United States file, there's actually a really good opportunity to invest in Canada. Then I had,

I think I said earlier that I spoke to Frank McKenna, the former Trane New Brunswick, the, you know, of TD Bank, he wears a thousand hats. He made a really interesting point that the world pivoting away from the United States, or at least growing its options so they're not all in one bag, is an opportunity that this group of investors is also looking at. We represent those other options, and we represent a country with a well-developed rule of law and stability, political stability, and all of that makes us an attractive place to invest as an alternative place to invest. And so they see the uncertainty with the United States as all the more reason to be investing in somewhere like Canada

and investing in the relationships between Canada and Europe. in Canada and India and Canada and much of the world, Australia, New Zealand, there's all kinds of options to grow economic growth and exports and just economic ties and the infrastructure that those ties are built on because the uncertainty that they're seeing too means we all have to diversify. They know that that's what's coming, so they want to invest a piece in that too. This might be an obvious question here. If we're asking investors to fork over a bunch of money, to help us build these big nation building projects. What are they going to be asking for in return?

These are not charities. On the contrary, a firm like Blackstone, for example, is known for being roofless in its extraction of profit. So there's a transaction that will happen, that they will say, instead of investing your taxpayer dollars in refurbishing this bridge or in building that port or in funding that pipeline will do it, but we get a piece of the action, right?

Pipelines are a really good example because usually it's the private sector that funds them and draws tolls and makes money off them. We sort of got used to state capitalism when the Canadian government built the TMX pipeline, and it's been a really good little source of revenue for us, right? We're making billions of dollars off that pipeline. But for the most part, through history, it's private companies that do that and they get those billions of dollars. But they're the ones who put up the billions of dollars, and they're the ones who put up the billions of

and they're the ones who assume at least some, if not most of the risk in doing that. The risk equation is going to have to be measured, especially on pipelines, because of our past in canceling projects that already have hundreds of millions of dollars invested. But yeah, they get a piece of it. And like one of the really interesting things about what this moment represents to me, Jamie, is that I think Canadians have opened their eyes and in a lot of cases, I think, changed their minds about how they feel about business and growth and what the lack of it looks like it and feels like and exposes us to.

And understanding that is something that, you know, everybody just wants to live their life. You want to go to work and then come home and see your kids and coach Little League and go out your buddies on the weekend and have a good time. That's really easy to do when the economy is booming. It gets harder and harder when the economy sucks. And these are all things that I think Canadians have. I've often been skeptical about and worry about the private sector coming in and scooping up revenues and driving up costs.

But at the same time, I think in this moment, there's an understanding of how important it can be and that if you get it right, it can be really good for everybody. But I imagine, too, that there are concerns about what we could lose when it comes to sovereignty here, too, right, when we get in bed with all these foreign investors. Like, might we find ourselves in two decades without control of our own strategic infrastructure? So that's where the fine print really matters, right? And that's where the strength of who's on either side of the table becomes really important, that the Singaporean fund and Larry Fink and BlackRock and Blackstone, these guys are really good at extracting profit and seeing where they can get and gain and keep control. And understanding how they approach that world is enormously important because they're really good at this, right? This is what they do.

do for a living. Most of us do not. The one guy in the room that does, Mark Carney and the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Mark Wiseman and, you know, all of these guys that that have made their career on the other side of these tables are able to provide, I think, and I hope, really important distinctions into what the other side is looking for and understanding that and understanding where and how to push back. But it's all going to be in the fine print. You know, it is funny to imagine what public reaction might have been just a few years ago to the idea that our prime minister, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was inviting the heads of Blackstone and BlackRock and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund to come by Canadian. And we've heard NDP leader Avi Lewis try and get some traction with this. He's been out there saying, It's not Black Rock that needs to be centered in this crisis. And also that.

Standing up for a stronger Canada also means standing up to the powers that be and the elites in this country. We cannot save Canada by selling it off piece by piece. And I guess there is a risk here that by courting all this big name private investment, the average Canadian worker is forgotten or left behind in favor of, for lack of a better word, the 1%. I mean, look, Abby Lewis is not wrong. And the people that are worried about this are not wrong. Your gut is in the right place when you ask, hey, wait a second, what are we doing here? But I think the central thesis and the pitch case of the pitch is we need the capital to grow.

We've got a lot of catching up to do. We haven't done the investments in the things that we've needed to do for a really long time. And it is important, not just for economic growth, but as I say, for our position in the world to be able to say, we're on top of this and we're going to defend it. and we are, what's the prime minister's term, masters in our own house. But all of those questions, Jamie, are hugely important and should never be discounted. They matter. And we've had some bad experiences with, you know, privatization of key assets in the past.

And we've seen some political fallout from that. And we need to make sure, like, this is a moment where Canada and the people representing us just absolutely have to be at the top of their game. And if they're not, this could prove to be a problem. If they're not, the investment companies may say, you know what, we don't believe you were walking away. They may say, oh, there's an opportunity to take advantage of them here and, and claw more than they should.

The balance between those two things is really important to strike. And we're not in the room. And it's not going to be a public affair. So we're only going to find out what was cut and what was made and what deals were arranged long after they're done. Yeah. And then related to that, do we have any sense of how this government will determine if it was a success or not? This is a question, Jamie, I've been asking all week of everybody I can get in front of.

And I still don't have a very good answer because everybody says, look, you're not going to get a final investment decision in the boardroom of this hotel between a premier and an investment firm. So then I say, okay, well, what are we going to get? And they say, oh, we're going to build the relationships. And so I don't know. And I still don't fully know when we wake up on Wednesday morning and look back at two crazy days, are we going to be able to say in that moment, this was a success? Are we going to be able to say that when we get the next federal budget and start to see some of the numbers?

Are we going to be able to see that when stuff starts getting actually signed and built? I don't know. And I'll be honest. I'm a little frustrated at the fact I don't know. Okay. Well, you're going to be there. So I think we might be coming back to everyone soon with something on that. Peter, thank you for this.

Really appreciate it. Oh, you bet. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.